


Every Flower Must Grow Through Dirt

by fardareismai



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Growing Up, Growing Up Together, childhood enemies, no-time-travel au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 12:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5666626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie Fraser and Claire Beauchamp meet several times in their childhoods and are never terribly impressed...</p><p>A growing up AU from Tumblr prompts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Come along, Claire, we must ask at the house if we can look at their ruins you know.  Wouldn’t do to be shot for trespass, now would it?”

Claire, who would much rather have stayed at the ruins, trudged after her uncle with ill grace.  “I thought Scotsmen were barbarians with broadswords,” she said.  “Surely you’d notice some savage with a melee weapon in time to explain yourself.”

“You might be surprised, my lass.  You might be very surprised.  Excellent soldiers, Highlanders, and not barbaric in the slightest.  Goodness, you look more a savage than they do, just look.”  Uncle Lamb pointed down the hill where there were several people milling about the yard of a manor house of white harled stone.

It was true.  With her curly hair unrestrained, dressed in sensible breeks rather than proper skirts, and with her face and hands filthy, she did look far more disreputable than the clean-clothed people who apparently inhabited the Highlands.

“Blimey,” she said, looking down.

“Do try not to act too horribly vulgar, won’t you my dear?” Uncle Lamb asked without much hope.

“Gracious,” Claire ammended, and Uncle Lamb chuckled.

“Let’s go then and meet them.  Highlanders are often very hospitable, they’ll probably offer us luncheon.”

“I hope so, I’m starved!”

The pair of them took off down the hill toward the house.  When they drew near, Uncle Lamb raised an arm and waved.

“Halloo the house!” he called.

Most of the movement in the dooryard continued, but one figure straightened from a wash cauldron.  She was very tall with very long red hair plaited down her back.  She approached them with some wariness, as was natural for a woman meeting a strange man, but without overt fear for she had men nearby.

“How do you do?” Uncle Lamb asked, sweeping off his hat.  “My name is Quentin Lambert.  I’m a historian.  This is my niece, Claire.”  He gestured to the grubby figure at his side.

The tall woman’s face took on an air of amused puzzlement at this information, but she did not seem distressed.  “I’m Ellen Mackenzie Fraser.  May I help you both?  Perhaps you’d like to come in and have a cup of tea?”

“That would be most appreciated madam.  I take it you are mistress here?”

“Aye, I am.”

“Capital!  My niece was just telling me that she was hungry…” he glanced down at his niece then and suddenly seemed to consider what damage she might do to upholstery in her current condition.  “I don’t suppose there’s someplace where she could scrape off the first layer or two of dirt, eh?  I could, I suppose, throw her in the loch over there.”

That made Ellen laugh.  “Willie, Jenny, Jamie,” she called, which caught the attention of three small figures in the yard.  “Come here, you lot, I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

The three joined their mother- for she so obviously was there mother, given the fact that they all had the same eyes, the same carriage, and the two boys had her fire-bright hair- with the wariness of cats coming across a stranger in their territory.

“This is Master Lambert, and his niece Mistress Claire,” the formality of this greeting struck Claire as amusing, and she grinned, showing that she was missing two teeth from the front of her smile, which gave her a winsome look.  “They will be with us for luncheon and possibly later.  Would you three take Claire to be cleaned up then?”

“How do you do?” the three children said, bowing formally to her.

Claire glanced at her uncle, who gave her a wink.  She turned back to the three and, summoning up all the manners she could remember ever having been taught, bowed back.  “Your servant.”

“You’re a Sassenach!” the younger of the boys cried in alarm.  “Mam!” he turned to his mother in shock.  “Mam, she’s-”

“Aye, Jamie, I know.  And you’ll be polite, won’t you then?  If not, your father will hear of it, mark my words.”

Jamie clamped his mouth shut, but glared at Claire from deep blue eyes.

Claire flushed with anger.  “What does that mean?” she asked, angry.  “What did you call me?  You shouldn’t call people names.”

“It means outlander, stranger, or, in most cases, Englishman,” Uncle Lamb instructed.  “And we are that, my dear girl, no denying.”

Claire and the young lad continued to glare at each other.

Uncle Lamb sighed.  “Go on and wash up for supper, my dear, there’s a good girl.”

The two older children, apparently amused by the interplay between their youngest sibling and this strange girl, grabbed young Jamie by his shirt and hauled him off.  Claire followed with bad grace, but she did follow.

“And avoid getting into a fight, Claire, do!” her uncle called after her.

She made no indication that she had heard him, and Uncle Lamb sighed.  He wouldn’t place good odds on the Fraser lad against his own English wildcat, and he did hope that his niece trouncing the lad wouldn’t turn his parents against allowing Uncle Lamb to explore their ruins.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Ok how about Jamie & Claire set in the 18th century w/ the idea they both from that time. And being forced into an arranged via the meddling uncles Lamb and Collum. The twist being that each is not happy about it and only rembers the other as a kid.

“Oh I think she’ll probably never wed,” Uncle Lamb said genially to their host as Claire sat to the side, biting her tongue nearly in half.  “She’s a headstrong girl, and too free with her opinions by half.” 

He took another long draught of the wine he had been offered by the chief of Clan Mackenzie- Rhenish, it was called- and hiccoughed.

“She sounds like my eldest sister, Ellen,” the Mackenzie said, refilling his guest’s glass without asking.  “She never had much truck with men until one night she fell in love and eloped within a few hours.  The mad besom,” he continued without heat and with a breath of amusement in his voice.

“Would that Claire would do that and get her off my hands,” Uncle Lamb chuckled.

This was the absolute limit.  Claire stood suddenly, reminding the men present that she was not, in fact, a piece of furniture.

“If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, her polite words belying the fury that shone clearly in her pale face and the fact that the men had not stood when she had.

She swept from the room, skirts swishing around her legs, and allowed the door to the Laird’s study to slam shut behind her.

Once out from under the eyes of the men she ran, seeking the fastest route out of the castle which, when she’d entered, had seemed so lovely and gracious, and now seemed stifling and claustrophobic.

She reached the grounds and picked up speed, running as though she could outrun her fury and disillusionment.  She couldn’t, and finally slowed to sit with her back against one of the outbuildings- the smell of warm hay and horse identifying its nature to her.

Her uncle was drunk, she told herself.  He’d never have said it otherwise.

“But he’d have though it,” she muttered, still angry.  “En vino veritas, after all.”

“Depends on the type of vino, in my experience.  The type of veritas as well, for that matter.”

She looked up.  And then up farther.  And then farther still.  The lad she was looking at had to be a head taller than the average, and was young enough still to be growing.  He was a good-looking boy, with curly red hair and slanting blue eyes, though his face showed a slight tendency toward spots, though he’d probably grow out of that in a year or two.

Claire scrambled up, in no mood to deal politely with any further males.  This one, at least, looked to be a scruffy sort- perhaps a stable hand.

“Who are you?” she asked, eschewing politeness.

“James Fraser, at your service,” he answered with a sarcastically elaborate bow and sweep of his grubby kilt.

The name lit a memory in her mind, and she thought back.

“I knew a Jamie Fraser once,” she said, slowly, chasing down the recollection.  “A red-haired hellion of a child who threw mud at me because I’m English.”  She narrowed her eyes, remembering what Colum Mackenzie had said before.  “Ellen Mackenzie Fraser…”

“My mother.  I remember a curlywig sassenach from when I was young as well. I seem to recall she called me names and told my mam that I’d been throwing mud, which got me tawsed.”

“You earned it,” she said, suddenly nine again.  “You started the whole thing.”

“I dinna recall it that way, but you canna trust a Sassenach to be honest now, can you?”

Claire opened her mouth to continue arguing when she noticed several boys of about Jamie’s age had come up behind him and were all laughing with him, exchanging jokes which she didn’t quite understand in Gaelic.

She spun on her heel to get away.  “Men,” she muttered as she stalked off. “Why can’t they all just have their skulls stoved in with an axe?”

~?~?~?~?~

“You have done _what_?” Claire screeched at her uncle.

“I’ve betrothed you to the Mackenzie’s nephew,” Lamb said, wincing at the effect of her shrillness on his aching head.

“That rude little beast?” she cried, having absolutely no sympathy for her uncle’s hangover.

That morning, she had watched him being punished for teasing the cook, a wide-beamed but otherwise wonderful woman.  Claire had watched the lad being spanked like a child, and while a vindictive voice had said that he deserved both the pain and the humiliation, her heart had gone out to him for being so brave and stubborn, but also so honestly contrite.

For all that, he had called her names, insulted one of the members of the household, and was generally an obnoxious, pig-headed, immature, _child_!

“He is sixteen, Uncle, surely you can’t expect me to marry someone so young!”

“He’s going to the Universite in Paris when he is eighteen, and is not meant to return for two years.  The age difference will not seem so enormous then, I’m sure.”

“But _why_?” she asked, exasperated.  “What on Earth could have convinced you to marry me to him at all?”

Uncle Lamb frowned as though that were a very good question- as though he couldn’t quite remember his drinking partner’s logic in the match.

“He’s of two very noble clans, my dear.  Fraser and Mackenzie are great houses, and he’s heir to his own father’s land as well.  It’s the farm we saw, don’t you recall?”

In truth, other than her enmity with the younger son of the house, Claire had nothing but good feeling toward the little farm she had known so briefly ten years before.

“He is not, Uncle!  He has an older brother who will inherit, even if his sister does not.”

“No,” Lamb said softly.  “The older lad died only a year later of smallpox, my dear.  And the Mackenzie’s sister two years on from that, in childbirth.  There are only the three of them now- the sister, the father, and your Jamie.”

Claire suddenly felt passionately sorry for the little family.  For all that, she objected still.  “He is not _my_ Jamie.”

And if she had anything to say about it, he never would be.

[Give me a pairing and a prompt and I’ll write you a short fic!](http://asthewheelwills.tumblr.com/post/135746821444/send-me-a-ship-and-a-number-and-ill-write-a-short)


	3. Chapter 3

“Does he even know anything about this?” Claire asked as she and her Uncle Lamb crested the hill that looked down on the manor house of the farm known as Lallybroch.

It had been nearly four years since she had been promised to the young nephew of Colum and Dougal Mackenzie, and for all she’d tried to find a way to dissolve the contract, there hadn’t been one.  Apparently Ned Gowan, the lawyer retained by Clan Mackenzie was a rather brilliant swordsman, if one considered the Shakespearean point that the pen was mightier than the sword to be truth.

She had never seen her intended after the day in the great hall of Castle Leoch and his humiliation.  She had no idea if he’d been told or how he felt about having a wayward sassenach thrust upon him.

She wondered if he had been working as hard as she to avoid the situation from France.  If so, neither of them had been able to accomplish it, and there was to be a wedding in a week’s time.

“I believe he was told, yes,” her uncle said, surveying the view from a half-length ahead of her.  “I am sorry my dear,” he said, as he had said a thousand times before.  “By the time it was clear how little you wanted it… well, you know it’s practically set in stone.  Perhaps it won’t be so bad as all that.”

“Or perhaps it will,” she muttered through clenched teeth.  “If Catholics don’t believe in divorce, at least they do believe in murder, isn’t that true?”

“I’ve heard he’s very handsome.”

Claire gave an un-ladylike snort.  “I do not care.”

~?~?~?~?~

He wasn’t there when she arrived.  Apparently his ship had been delayed in France (though Claire suspected that he had arranged it that way intentionally- she would have done) and he wouldn’t arrive for two weeks yet.

Claire took the time, then, to familiarize herself with the house, the staff, and her new family.  Brian and Jenny Fraser initially treated her with kid gloves, as though afraid to leave fingerprints on her, but quickly learned that, while she had an educated accent, and no great knowledge of farm life, she did have a quick mind, a strong back, and a willingness to work.

Within hours, Jenny and Claire were friends, and by the time Jamie arrived, they were sisters.  Brian found her charming, if odd, and was the first to guess that she had a way with plants.

“You can work in the drying shed, I’d say.  We’re always needing simples as well, do you ken how to make them?”

Claire did- she had learned the making of medicine from every village witch and local midwife in her and her uncle’s travels.  With this specific task, she quickly became a part of life at Lallybroch as they awaited her bridegroom’s return.

~?~?~?~?~

She was in the garden, and quite as dirty as she had been on her first visit to Lallybroch, when a shadow fell across her plants.

Claire glanced up to see that the person standing there was a man and a stranger.

“Beg pardon,” she said cheerfully, “but I must finish this.  Would you mind standing on my other side?  I can’t quite tell the colour of these beans with you blocking the light.”

The man said nothing, but moved as she had asked, and Claire quickly finished plucking the ripe bean pods from Jenny’s vines and dropping them into her basket.  Once finished, she dusted her hands on her apron and stood to offer a smile to the visitor.

“Good afternoon,” she said, inclining her head.  “My name is Claire Beauchamp.  Can I help you with anything?”

He was a handsome man, broad of shoulder and very tall.  His hair was hidden under a bonnet, he was wearing a Fraser tartan, and his mouth held a half-smile as he looked at her.  

She could imagine how she looked- hair in a mad cloud about her head, unwilling to remain in its pins, nails dirt-encrusted, and face flushed with effort.  Claire refused to blush, however.

“Are you mistress here?” he asked, his voice lilting with a Highland burr that was not so pronounced as most of the visitors who came from the village.  Claire wondered if he was a Fraser from Beaufort Castle, come to represent that part of the family for the wedding.

“Not really,” she said with a shrug.  “I’m engaged to wed the son of the house, who was a petulant child the first time I met him, and a spotty-faced and surly teen the last, but if you want someone who knows their way around, I should find Mistress Fraser for you.  I believe Jenny is up with the sheep just now.”

“The future Laird of Lallybroch is to wed a sharp-tongued Sassenach, is he?” the man asked.

Claire turned to look at him more carefully.  Good-natured humour was shining out of those slanted blue eyes.  Just the same eyes as Jenny Fraser.

She reached up, without asking permission, and tugged the bonnet off his head, revealing his telltale red hair.

“A sharp-tongued sassenach who still has deadly aim with a mud pie, thank you,” she said.

“I’ve no doubt of that.”

Claire inclined her head to him.  “Master Fraser,” she said, in greeting, though her eyes flicked up to him.  “Or should I call you Laird Lallybroch?”

“I think ‘Jamie’ will suit, actually, as we’re to be wed.”

“So you are going through with this farce?” she asked.

“Why would I not?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes.  “Because I’m a sassenach that you barely know and have never once been kind to!”

“Ah,” he said, looking suddenly sheepish.  “Well there is that, aye.  I do owe you an apology, Mistress Beauchamp.  I’m afraid… well… I’m afraid that as a child I was a bit of a bastard.  You were not the only person I insulted, and I do apologise for that.”

Claire sighed.  It was hard to remain angry for a slight made from one child to another nearly a decade and a half before.

“As far as the time at Leoch… I apologize even more for that.  I was an awkward bugger at sixteen, and couldna think of anything but insults to say to a pretty girl.  You received the brunt of that, and that is unforgivable.”

“But you’ve learned better?” Claire remained skeptical, though she was beginning to soften.

“No, not really.  I’m still an awkward bugger around pretty girls, but I’ve been practicing this speech since I arrived back in Scotland.  I willna call you names anymore though, Sassenach.”

Somehow, the way he said it this time wasn’t the insult it normally was.  With his blue eyes sparkling and the friendly inflection, it became a term of endearment.

“So, are you going to keep trying to pull apart Ned’s contract then?”

“I’ve spent four years trying to do that already.  I somehow don’t think I’m likely to find the loose thread here at the eleventh hour.”

“Well, you could always wrest my dirk from me, murder me in the kailyard and bury my body under the beans?”

Claire finally laughed.  “Don’t think it’s not a temptation, Jamie Fraser.”

Jamie grinned back.  He then took her hand and raised it, dirt and all, to his lips.  “My lady,” he said, formally, “I would verra much like it if you and I were to wed in four days time, and until that time, I should verra much like it if I would be allowed to get to know you.  Would you mind that owermuch?”

“No,” she said, smiling.  “I think that’s a very good idea, Mr. Fraser.”

~?~?~?~?~

Four days later, amid the yellow roses planted by Ellen Mackenzie Fraser, Jamie and Claire were married in the dooryard of Lallybroch.


End file.
